Hangzhou archive honors the Qian family
Lin’an Museum in Hangzhou opened with exhibitions honoring the legacy of the Qian family .
Qian Liu, founder and first ruler of the Wuyue Kingdom (AD 907-978), was born and buried in Lin’an. It is recorded that 11 members of the Qian royal family were also buried there. Archeologists have found and excavated seven so far.
“The place where the museum is located is very close to the birthplace of Qian,” said Bao Weihua, director of the museum.
“To the east there is Gongchen Mountain where Qian was born, to the south there are remnants of the Guangxiaomingyin Temple from the Wuyue period, and to the north there is King Qian’s Mausoleum where thousands of Qian’s descendants come from all around the world to attend an ancestor worship ceremony each year.”
Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province, was once capital of the Wuyue Kingdom and its prosperity owes much to Qian.
Lin’an Museum is designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Wang Shu.
An exterior view of Lin’an Museum
Born toward the end of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907), he established the Wuyue Kingdom and kept the area in peace for a long time when a great part of China was still in turmoil.
The Wuyue territory used to cover the present Zhejiang Province, Shanghai, the southeastern part of Jiangsu Province including Suzhou and the northeastern part of Fujian Province.
Qian and his successors built hydraulic infrastructure and encouraged the development of local farming. Buddhism and ceramics craftsmanship were booming during that period.
The museum was designed by Wang Shu, the first Chinese national to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize. It has three exhibition halls with a floor area of 10,500 square meters, showcasing the history of Lin’an ever since the place was inhabited by human beings.
The essence of the museum collection are items excavated from the Qian family tombs. The star exhibits are three gigantic Yue kiln ceramics found in the tomb of Qian Liu’s mother Shuiqiu in the early 1980s.
In 1995, experts deemed all three — an incense burner, a wine jar with lid and an oil lamp — as “national treasures.” Zhejiang has a total of 18 such top-graded cultural relics.
“To be a national treasure of this kind, it must have a confirmed chronological period, or a clear excavation place record, and it must be unique. They (the three pieces) represent the highest level of Yue kiln craftsmanship in the early 10th century,” said museum researcher Zhu Xiaodong.
The genre of these ceramics is referred to as bise ceramics (秘色瓷). Zhu said the Chinese character bi (秘) indicates its special jade green celadon color.
These pieces used to be articles of tribute sent to the capital of the Tang empire. Excavation from the Shuiqiu tomb proves that they were also used by the Qian family as the ruling class of the local regime.
The 66-centimeter brownish under-glazed incense burner is an artifact that Shuiqiu used in her lifetime and was placed in the grave when she died.
“We say so because when the burner was discovered, we found a lot of incense ashes in it,” said Zhu.
Ashes were also found in the oil lamp. And they have been kept as they have been found together with the objects.
The incense burner is composed of three parts and each part was produced and fired separately.
“To make celadon ware of such a grand size is not easy even now. You would probably have to make 99 bad samples to get one as perfectly fired as this piece,” Zhu said.
The lid of the burner is in the shape of a helmet, topped by a lotus bud knob. The upper part is hollowed out with patterns of flower petals while the rest is painted with cloud patterns.
The main body is also decorated with cloud patterns and is further supported by five feet sculpted in the shape of tiger heads and feet.
“You can even see the four stripes on the tigers’ foreheads forming the Chinese character 王 (king),” said Zhu.
An underglazed incense burner excavated from the tomb of Qian Liu’s mother Shuiqiu
A museum staff member adjusts the position of a wine jar lid.
The Buddhist-style xumi base (须弥座) implies the deep-rooted influence of Buddhism of the time. It also has hollowed-out patterns which represent gates in the royal palace.
The whole of the lid is beautifully glazed in a grayish green color. Underglaze means that the pottery is painted before being applied with a transparent ceramic glaze and fired in a kiln.
The body and the base seem to be more in its naked earthenware color as Zhu speculates probably the kiln temperature was not controlled well when firing these two parts.
Researchers believe that the prevalence of celadon ware in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River since the Tang Dynasty was very much related to people’s fondness for sipping tea at that time.
The tea was then ground into powder and brewed in hot water. In Lu Yu’s “The Classic of Tea,” the color of the brewed tea is most matched with celadon ware.
Conservators at the museum spent five years to restore the three artifacts, to get rid of harmful mold on the surface and excessive salt since they had been steeped in water for over 1,000 years underground.
Other highlights at the museum include a rare late Tang Dynasty white-glazed ding ware with banded metal rim and astrological charts found on the chamber ceilings of the Qian family tombs.
